I’m posting a picture here of my mom and dad, Helen and Dorsey Shouse. Don’t know exactly when this was taken, but it’s probably not too long after he returned home from the CCC (Civilan Conservation Corps) where he served in the late 1930’s, building roads in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I have his old copy of 1937 CCC Yearbook from the Fort Brady CCC District, headquartered in Saulte Ste. Marie.   Accompanying the pictures of these thousands upon thousands of young men are narratives about all the things they were accomplishing… building roads, dams, power-lines, etc., well it really is just remarkable. The yearbook talks about all the “boys who finished their high-school diplomas while living at the CCC Camp”.  I think dad was one of those.

Dad never talked about his time there in Michigan very much, but I know he was proud of it, and I’m sure he must have been grateful for the opportunity just to work at all.  He served from October 1936 until April, 1939. He was born in June 1918, so in Fall of 1936  when he joined the CCC, he would have been 18 years old. With the country still in the Great Depression, this was likely one of the few opportunities available to him.

Back in Missouri after his CCC service, he took up with this sweet lady in the picture, who he had known many years before as one of the neighbor girls from up the road. By the time he returned to Missouri, she was working as a waitress in Kingdom City, Missouri  at a restaurant called the “Three Sisters”. It was located at the junction of two US Highways, 54 and 40, and apparently was well known as a great place to eat.  She rented a sleeping room upstairs, along with a few of the other waitresses. He worked at a mushroom plant in an old undergound quarry in Auxvasse, just a few miles away, and I think he was living in McCredie, basically adjacent to Kingdom City.  I can imagine that he would sometimes go in and get a blue-plate-special, or perhaps only coffee or a piece of pie, but mostly just  to see this sweet girl.  By 1941 they were married and they’d soon be new parents. And they were 60 years together after that. They moved to Mexico, right about the time my brother was born, and rented a house on West Love street. Dad went to work as a “Fireman” at A.P. Green Refractories, the town’s major employer.  A “Fireman” didn’t put out fires, but rather was the title for guys with the hot, dirty job of keeping the fires in the kilns going. Soon he transferred to the “Electric Shop”, and began to take night school and correspondence classes in electrical and electronics.  He remained in the Electric Shop for 44 years, eventually getting promoted to be its supervisor.

Though I don’t know exactly when this picture was taken, I do know where.    My cousin Karla saw a copy of the picture and asked her dad, my Uncle Curt, mom’s brother.  Curt instantly recognized the spot, and said it was at the old Auxvasse lake, by the quarry.  I sure wonder how he got her up there on those rocks in that skirt.

Theirs was a remarkable love story. I’m sure things weren’t always perfect, but I never ever remember a cross word between them (at least not in front of me). Not even once.

And I don’t ever remember him either leaving for work or coming home from work without giving her a little hug and a kiss. He looked at her with a look in his eye that I never saw him ever give anyone else. Everybody deserves to have at least one person in the world look at them like that.

For her part, she was oh so proud of him in every way. I’m pretty sure she thought he hung the moon.

So did I.

John

Postscript:    My niece Lori said that maybe he didn’t hang the moon. Maybe he just figured out a way to wire it up, way up there in the sky, so it shined on us brightly. And then maybe mom took it from there and made it beautiful.   Sounds right.